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Thursday, June 20, 2013

R.I.P. Personal Ancestral File (PAF)

For the past ten years, Personal Ancestral File has been on life support. It will finally die on July 15, 2013. Yes folks, the venerable program wil die. Here is the announcement:

This is a really big deal for the genealogical software industry. Although there are a few "free" genealogy programs out there, none of them had the FamilySearch stamp of approval and none of them had the market penetration of Personal Ancestral File or PAF. The official abandonment of the program is long overdue, especially with the FamilySearch emphasis on photos and stories and such.

Beginning July 15, 2013, PAF will be retired and will no longer be available for download or support. PAF users should consider alternative products to meet their ongoing personal genealogy management needs.

3 comments:

I, of course, knew this day would come and have used other programs but PAF was my first love when I was 17 and just starting out at the Family History centers. I still use it everyday. Tell me that you do not think a program that has not had any updates in 10 years and still operates like a powerhouse all the way to Windows 8 is not amazing ?Just utterly depressed over the announcement. I still belong to two PAF users group; this past year we got a surge of new users. As I also volunteer to help people put their genealogy online, I estimated that many will not buy a software but will quickly download a free one and PAF was the best.